Various plastic foam processor trays for packaging food are known in the prior art. In designing a processor tray, inner surface area, capacity, sidewall rigidity, and weight are key considerations. These trays are typically packed with perishable food items and then surrounded with a plastic film overwrap to seal the food within the package. Once wrapped the tray is ready to be placed in a container for shipment; typically, multiple wrapped processor trays are stacked one upon another and the weight of the packaged processor trays may cause the plastic film of underlying trays to be stretched and loosened during shipment. As a result the wrapped trays may leak juices, blood, etc. from the products packaged therein, leading to a loss of aesthetic appeal, loss of shelf life, contamination of adjacent packages, and difficulty in handling.
Another consideration for the packaging of tubular meat products, such as sausages, is the desire to present the sausage in an arcuate (curved) configuration as it is generally considered more pleasing. The sausages however are made in straight (linear) form and must be shaped from linear to the desired curved configuration either manually or by mechanical means. It is difficult to place curved sausages in a tray, and in particular to maintain the curved configuration of the sausages in the tray.
One prior art solution is to form a tray with a series of curved recesses, each recess being suitably sized to receive substantially the entire length and depth (radial diameter) of the sausage, and to provide an overhanging edge in the opening of the recess to hold the (entire) sausage in its respective recess (Mello U.S. Pat. No. 5,820,904). The Mello tray is not only structurally deficient but very difficult to form with any standard thermoforming processing equipment as the overhang makes it difficult or impossible to remove the tray from the mold. The overhang also makes it hard to get the sausage into the tray recess.
Another proposed solution is to form a flat bottom tray having a series of recesses in the sidewalls to engage the rounded ends of the curved sausage links (Benson U.S. Design Pat. D633,754S). The Benson tray is not particularly effective in holding the sausages in place in the wrapped package, as the wrapped packages are often turned upside down, and encounter rough handling during shipment. Another disadvantage of the Benson sausage tray is that one end is convex and the other concave which leads to challenges in wrapping, de-nesting, and results in poor yield from the production aspect (e.g., as the product is trimmed in the manufacturing area it generates more scrap). The Benson tray also requires using the edge of one sausage product to hold the next sausage product in place, leading to manual distortion of the products.
Thus it would be desirable to provide a processor tray which can maintain tubular meat products in an arcuate configuration during packing, shipment and display.
It would be desirable to provide such a tray that can maintain a plastic film wrapped there about in a taut state.
It would be desirable to provide such a processor tray having substantial structural rigidity.
It would be desirable to provide such a processor tray that is easy and inexpensive to manufacture, easy to load (fill with product), and easy to stack and un-stack (de-nest) both empty and filled.